Birmingham councillors have backed plans to look into setting up a trust to run the city’s failing child protection services – despite the Tory opposition saying they had lost trust and confidence in the service and Labour cabinet member Brigid Jones.

But the Labour and Lib Dem councillors voted down a Conservative proposal to go straight ahead with a trust. They argued it was wrong to proceed without investigating the impact first.

The opposition Conservatives claimed they have lost ‘trust and confidence’ in the Labour run children’s services and demanded it be outsourced.

One after another the Tory councillors attacked Labour cabinet member Brigid Jones and said they had been misled and told the service is on the road to recovery after seven years of failure.

And led a round of applause for frontline social workers who are doing a difficult job well, despite being ‘insulted’ and preyed on by ‘undercover filming’ of their work.

Labour council leader John Clancy also leapt to her defence saying she doing a ‘great’ job. “She has one of the toughest jobs in British politics. It's very, very easy to call for resignations and it’s inappropriate. I cannot think of anyone better in this chamber to do that job.” he said.

He added that the high level of struggling and failing child protection services across the country, 75 per cent of inspections have rated services as inadequate or requiring improvement, showed it was a national problem, not just a Birmingham one.

A wide ranging council debate covered the seven years of failure and the high profile deaths of children under the protection of the council’s care service including Khyra Ishaq , Keegan Downer and Keanu Williams .

The council says it is likely to take more than a year to fully conisder the merits of a trust and will bring in consultants to look at it rather than distract management from the day to day problems faced by the department.